Tenwek

Well, we are finally in Kenya! Sorry that I am just now gettting around to posting an update. The internet has been very sporadic. Thanks to everyone for thier emails and comments. We arrived in Nairobi around 3pm on Wednesday afternoon. The original plan was for us to stay at a Mennonite guesthouse for one night in Nairobi and drive to Tenwek on Thursday morning. The reason is because it takes 3 hrs to get to Tenwek from Nairobi and they don't like to drive at night here. However, the plans changed and we were told that we could make it to Tenwek before dark and that someone would pick us up from the airport and take us straight there. When we arrived, we applied for our visa, got our baggage, exchanged some money and then met the man who was going to drive us to Tenwek. His name was Michael Collins and he was tall and skinny and had a huge smile on his face. He is 24 years old, married and has one child and lives in Bomet. It took us forever to get through Nairobi. We got there just as rush hour started, so it took us almost an hour to get through the city. Once we were out of the city, we were driving through the mountains and the landscape was beautiful. Wiley sat up front with Michael and I was in the middle seat of the van. The weather was beautiful, so we drove with the windows down for most of the trip. I was really trying hard not to micro-manage from the back of the van. I kept wanting to ask....are we getting close? Are we going to make it before dark? do you have enough gas in the car? maybe we should stop and get some? I even tried to mention these concerns to Wiley discreetly, but he didn't catch on. About halfway through the trip Michael slammed on the brakes. I shot up out of my seat and was looking around...did we blow a tire? what is going on? All he said was, "giraffe...look!". To our right there were about 5 giraffe. They were pretty far away and I was stunned that he actually spotted them, but it was awesome! Wiley took some pictures. We started back up again and 5 minutes later I was flying forward in my seat again - more giraffe. This time they were closer though. Michael jumped out of the car and told us to follow him. We went to the other side of the road, and up a hill so that we could take pictures. I never expected to see animals on the drive in, so it was pretty exciting. We got back in the van and 10 minutes down the road he slammed on the brakes again....zebra. There were at least 10 of them just sitting there on the side of the road. They were extremely close to us and seemed to not care that we were taking pictures of them. Anyway, we finally hinted to Michael that he didn't have to stop for every animal that we saw! He was so nice that he probably would have done that so that we could get a good picture. I was also very aware that the sun was setting and that we still had 1.5 hrs to go to get to Tenwek...I finally accepted the fact that we were going to be driving in the dark! As the sun set I started to get pretty tired. I fell asleep for a little while and when I woke back up it was dark outside and we had stopped at a check point. There were police outside with machine guns and they were shining flashlights in the van. My heart stopped. Michael talked to the police for what seemed like forever in Swahili. I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but they finally let us pass. Michael said that he told them we were missionaries and they let us go through. We finally got to Tenwek at around 8:15pm. Gladys, the guesthouse manager was there to greet us and showed us to the guesthouse and our room. We are in room 1 which is right next to the common room where everyone eats and hangs out. We have our own shower and bathroom and a bed with a huge misquito net hanging above it. Wiley said this is the same room that he stayed in the first time that he came to Tenwek. Hopefully I will be able to post some of the pictures so that you can see what it looks like. We met some of the other people that are here. Laura, who is an Ole Miss pharmacy student, Craig and Hannah - they just got married 3 weeks ago and went on their honeymoon and then came straight to Africa. Craig is doing research and just finished his first year of residency at Brown. Hannah is not in the medical field and has been helping Craig with his research. Carolyn is a public health major at Johns Hopkins, Emmanuel is a med student from Germany, Vince who is a resident at Brown and Robbie who is about to start his 4th year of med school like Wiley. They are all so nice and we sat around and talked to everyone for a while before finally deciding to go to bed. We lathered up with bugspray and put the misquito net over our bed and went to sleep.
The next day we woke up at 7am, took showers, and ate a quick breakfast. Gladys met us at 8am to give us a tour of the hospital and the compound. Wiley was having fun identifying buildings that he remembered from his previous trips and inquiring about new buildings that he had not seen before. We walked around the various wards - surgery, casualty (ER), OB, Endoscopy suite, medicine, pediatrics. In the list of things that they told me I could do while I was here, they mentioned that I could hold the babies in the nursery. I was definitely excited to hear that and went ahead and lined up a time that I could help. Wiley met with Dr. Manchester and Dr. McClaughlin that he will be working with on his medicine rotation. After we got the full tour, we went to get lunch in the hospital Canteen. We sat with Hannah, Craig, Carolyn, Laura and Will. We had fries, rice, beans and Samosas (meat filled pastry). All of it was very good. Wiley was a little disappointed that they did not have ketchup, but he made do. I don't know what Wiley is going to do for 6 weeks without adequate condiments. We should have packed some soy sauce and A1 for him to take with him. Last night he found some soy sauce in the guesthouse and put it on his rice. I looked at the expiration date and it said April 2009! He still ate it anyway....that is how serious his condiment addiction is! Anyway, the rest of the day was spent meeting with Doctors and meeting other people that are serving here at Tenwek. I went to the nursery for a little while to get a short orientation. Wiley met with the Dr. Mike Mwacharo that he is going to be doing research with and was able to help with an endoscopy. Wiley said they were going to let him do the entire thing and asked him how many he had performed before. He said that he didn't feel comfortable doing it and that he had never performed one but he wanted to watch. The patient had esophogeal carcinoma and had a palliative stent in her esophogas. After talking to Dr. Manchester, Wiley found out that they are going to let us go on the Safari this weekend since I am leaving next Friday. I wasn't expecting to be able to go on a Safari this trip and wasn't even going to bring it up, but everyone kept insisting that we should go while I am here. I think it might work out best anyway because Wiley is just now getting oriented and will not have many patients that he will have to worry about while he is gone. So we leave Friday at 9:30am for Masa Mara. That basically sums up Wed. We ate dinner with everyone in the common room and heard about everyone's day and the patients that they saw. We went to bead early because we are still exhausted from the time change.
Thursday - We woke up at 7am and Wiley got ready for his first day at the hospital. While we were getting ready a little boy named Hugh started to talk to us. He is one of the children of the Cameron family that has been here for a couple of weeks. They have two girls and one boy - Hugh. Hugh is Wiley reincarnate. He has not met a stranger, has incredible energy, and asks a million questions. He is about 5 or 6 and has blond hair. It all started when we came out in the morning to eat breakfast and make coffee. He kept asking me for a cup of coffee with a little bit of sugar in it. Of course I was not about to give it to him. He then started asking a million questions. Why can't I have any? What is your name? Where are you staying? Can I come in your room? Will you play with me? Want to ride scooters? Want to play raquetball? Can I play with your computer? Can I have some gum? Why is your computer so small? Why do you have so many crayons? He ended up hanging out in our room all morning. Wiley told him he had to get off of our bed or else he would have to make him up in it...to which Hugh responded, "Oh that would be cozy!". Wiley almost fell to his knees laughing when Hugh said that. Like I said, Wiley reincarnate. He is super cute and I played a few games with him after Wiley left to go to the hospital. My plan was to go to the nursery at 10am and help out and then possibly go to the pediatric ward and play with the kids. Unfortunately I was not able to help out much because they babies had just been fed and were content and sleeping. So I talked to some of the nurses and helped make cotton balls. I left the nursery after about an hour so that I could watch Hugh and the rest of the Cameron family could go up to the nursery to hold the babies. After an hour or so I decided to go to the community health center to see if I could help out. They asked me to count malaria pills and to separate them out into bags. I did that for about an hour and then it was time for lunch. Wiley came back to the guesthouse and we ate with everyone. We heard about everyone's day so far. Wiley said that he is enjoying it so far but I didn't really get a lot of details. I will try to get more from him later. After lunch Hannah and I decided to go back to the nursery, but they told us it would be best to come back at 5pm. We can't ever seem to get the timing right! It is hard because I don't want to be in the way, but I want to help out if they need me. We decided to go back to the community health center and count pills, but we quickly ran out of bags and had to stop. I started to get a little discouraged that I would not be helping out much here at Tenwek and was wishing that I had some sort of medical background so that I could be of some use at this place. But I had to remind myself of a devotional that I read not too long ago. That I might not be serving in the way that I was expecting to serve, but that doesn't mean that God can't use me where I am. I know that I just need to be willing and obedient to serve wherever there is a need and wherever He is calling me...even if it is outside of my comfort zone or not what I expected. I am looking forward to tomorrow and next week. I am about to head back to the nursery, so I better get off the computer. Sorry for the incredibly long post, but I just wanted to give you an update. I will try to give an update again tomorrow.